How Cold Emails Led This 29-Year-Old To Get Funded By Mark Cuban And Google

When Ilya Semin, the 29-year-old CEO of Datanyze, wanted to first
test his product in 2012, he turned to one of the oldest
marketing tactics: cold emailing.

He found the email addresses of
a few dozen sales executives and sent them an email asking for
feedback on his new product.

His product could search
millions of websites every day and automatically figure out which
software — in areas such as content management, e-commerce, and
data-analytics solutions — they were using. It was an early
prototype but definitely something salespeople could use to
generate better leads. Knowing which software a website was
already using could help them sell their own competing
products.

Nearly half of the people
responded to Semin's emails, sometimes with
valuable insight. He would update his software with their
suggestions and reach out again for more feedback.

One of the first people to
respond to his emails was Ben Sardella, then the vice president
of sales at Kissmetrics, a web-analytics software company.
Cleverly, Semin mentioned that his software could show how many
people were using Mixpanel, a Kissmetrics competitor:

The
email Semin sent to Sardella asking for
feedback.Datanyze

After a few
emails, the two met at a coffee shop in San Francisco to walk
through Datanyze’s software. Semin explained how it worked and
showed the data it collected: the type of software each website
used, when to expect a website's software contracts to expire,
and the size of the companies. Sardella was hooked, and he became
the first customer to use Datanyze. In fact, he was so impressed
that he ended up joining Datanyze as cofounder in 2013.

Semin's cold email also
caught the attention of billionaire Mark Cuban, now widely known
for his role as an investor in the reality TV show "Shark
Tank." In April, Semin sent Cuban an email with his pitch
deck, not really expecting a response back anytime soon. But
within an hour, Semin's inbox rang its little bell. It was Cuban:
"Definitely interested — Send
me more details." A few months later, Cuban joined IDG Ventures
and Google Ventures in a $2
million seed-round investment.

Since Sardella joined, Datanyze
has grown 25% every month. It says it is profitable after
reaching $1 million in annual recurring revenue early last year.
Despite having just 18 employees, it has already signed up 200
companies, including big customers like Marketo and
HubSpot.

Looking back, Semin says people
are generally always willing to help, especially when you're not
asking for money. He always asked for feedback first, and that's
what propelled his business to early success.

"The biggest lesson I learned
was: If you want advice, ask for money. But if you want money,
ask for advice," Semin told Business Insider.